Chapter 4: The Morning After the Moon (2)
He climbs out of bed, pulls on pants, still refusing to meet my eyes. My fated mate. The bond reaches for him desperately, trying to pull him back, but there's a wall there now. Something cold and decided.
"Why?" The word tears out of me. "The Moon Goddess chose us. You felt it. I know you felt it. The bond—"
"Diana is what the pack needs." Lucian finally looks at me, and his amber eyes are cold. Political. The face of an Alpha making a strategic decision. "She's stronger. Better connected. This was a mistake."
"A mistake?" I'm shaking now. The bond is trying to drag me to my knees, make me submit, make me beg. "You can't reject a fated mate. The consequences—the bond-sickness will—"
"I, Alpha Lucian of the Sunstone Pack," his voice goes formal, ritual, and I realize with horror what he's about to do, "reject you, Selene, as my fated mate. I choose another."
The bond doesn't break cleanly.
It tears.
Jagged edges. Bleeding agony. Like something vital has been ripped out of my chest while I'm still conscious, still aware of every nerve ending shredding apart. I hit my knees on his bedroom floor, one hand clutched over my heart where the golden glow has turned to broken glass.
Diana kneels beside me. Close enough that only I can hear her whisper: "Did you really think the Moon Goddess would waste an Alpha on something as pathetic as you? I've wanted him since we were children. I just had to wait for you to stop being useful."
She planned this. The seduction. The timing. Everything.
"Get out." Lucian's voice is distant, muffled by the roaring in my ears. "Selene, I need you to leave."
I stumble to my feet. The bond is screaming. My wolf is howling. Twenty years of perfect Omega obedience war with the urge to shift, to fight, to make them hurt the way I'm hurting—
But I'm weak. I've always been weak. That's what they've told me my entire life.
So I leave.
I stumble through the pack compound in broad daylight, my anguish visible to everyone. Wolves stop and stare. Some look away quickly. Others whisper behind their hands. The physical pain of the torn bond makes me vomit in the courtyard, bile and blood mixing in the dirt.
No one helps me.
They can sense the shift in power. The rejected Omega. Damaged goods. A liability.
I make it to my quarters and collapse on the floor. The bond screams and bleeds inside my chest like an open wound. My perfect Omega worldview—the one that promised if I was just good enough, obedient enough, perfect enough, I would be rewarded—shatters into pieces around me.
Through the agony, through my tears, something new ignites.
A small spark of rage at the unfairness of a goddess who would do this. At a pack that demands perfection but offers no protection. At a mate who saw me as a political problem rather than a person.
The bond pulses with Lucian's presence. He's comfortable now. Content. Already moving on with Diana like I never existed.
And beneath the pain, that spark of rage whispers a question I've never dared ask before:
What if the Moon Goddess was wrong?
**